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Could something explain to me how the QT and GTK are different from things like Enlightenment? I understand they make different themes and such, but how does application building work? Would GNUstep be compatible with something like enlightenment?

If a Linux GUI (ho ho ho) can provide an experience as rich as Aqua or Aero and base it on this software rendering

Something similar already exists. It's called Enlightenment (DR17).

Watch the video for a quick demo. There are also decent screenshots, though like with OS X, really don't do it justice.

Disclaimer: I'm both a OS X and Enlightment user (former KDE).

If a Linux GUI (ho ho ho) can provide an experience as rich as Aqua or Aero and base it on this software rendering

Something similar already exists. It's called Enlightenment (DR17).

Watch the video for a quick demo. There are also decent screenshots, though like with OS X, really don't do it justice.

Disclaimer: I'm both a OS X and Enlightment user (former KDE).

If a Linux GUI (ho ho ho) can provide an experience as rich as Aqua or Aero and base it on this software rendering

Something similar already exists. It's called Enlightenment (DR17).

Watch the video for a quick demo. There are also decent screenshots, though like with OS X, really don't do it justice.

Disclaimer: I'm both a OS X and Enlightment user (former KDE).

If a Linux GUI (ho ho ho) can provide an experience as rich as Aqua or Aero and base it on this software rendering

Something similar already exists. It's called Enlightenment (DR17).

Watch the video for a quick demo. There are also decent screenshots, though like with OS X, really don't do it justice.

Disclaimer: I'm both a OS X and Enlightment user (former KDE).

Let me guess, you've never really used OS X, have you? When all I used was Linux I thought Baghira was cool. Since I've bought a Mac (PowerBook), though, I have to say that Baghira doesn't even come close. It sort of gets the look, but it the feel is nowhere near the real thing. The eyecandy in OS X is on another level.

However, I feel that Englightment DR17 is on that level. Try it out. It compiles fairly easy from source, at least on Mandriva 2005. You can watch the Video to get an idea.

I do like KDE, however, and use it on all of my Linux machines. I also use several KDE apps (Quanta, Kate, Konsole, and others) under OS X. IMHO, KDE blows away Windows. I love the network transparency in it, too. It's nice to be able to save directly to a webdav server with Kate, for example.

Let me guess, you've never really used OS X, have you? When all I used was Linux I thought Baghira was cool. Since I've bought a Mac (PowerBook), though, I have to say that Baghira doesn't even come close. It sort of gets the look, but it the feel is nowhere near the real thing. The eyecandy in OS X is on another level.

However, I feel that Englightment DR17 is on that level. Try it out. It compiles fairly easy from source, at least on Mandriva 2005. You can watch the Video to get an idea.

I do like KDE, however, and use it on all of my Linux machines. I also use several KDE apps (Quanta, Kate, Konsole, and others) under OS X. IMHO, KDE blows away Windows. I love the network transparency in it, too. It's nice to be able to save directly to a webdav server with Kate, for example.

It is pretty, but it really looks just like any other KDE centric distro, there's honestly nothing unique about how it looks. What I'm waiting for is Enlightenment to be actively supported, developed and set as the default desktop by one of the big distros.

Which is why I've been pulling for Enlightenment all this time. Sure they don't have the following of KDE, but what they've done so far is pretty damn amazing.

Odd, I believe X to be one of the greatest strength of Unix ; yes, its used in other OSes besides Linux - does the presence of X in Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Irix, and so on make them impossible to use? Millions of X users beg to differ.

To fix something, you need to quantify its brokenness first, something you have not done well at:

X is not supposed to look good, nor is it supposed to be ugly, or have any sort of 'look' at all. Perhaps you are thinking of window managers, desktop environments or similar. Many of which are reasonably attractive, caveat emptor.

Nor do I believe X is slow. What are you comparing it to? I get superior OpenGL performance under X in linux compared to the same hardware running windows with the equivalent version video drivers. X must be doing something right, but it could well be the linux kernel doing a lot better than the windows one at managing the hardware, admittedly.

Complaints about compiling code, fighting with drivers, software dependancies, and so on are not really weakness in X, merely a lack of experience in handling code. But not to worry, most *nix distributions are nice enough to ship binary builds of X that are both fast and include all the nice font rendering and antialiasing you might ever care for. Of course, you have the freedom to compile the lot by hand if you really want to, but it is by no means necessary. If your distribution of choice is not being cooperative, then investigate better alternatives.

Granted, nothing is ever 100% easy, but you sound like you are picking the hardest way forward and hence getting unneccessarily frustrated. If X was broken, then like everything else under linux ( driver support, schedulers, scalability, journaled filesystems etc all of which are better now than they have ever been and are still improving ), it _would_ be fixed.

It may be for a lack of looking, but I still haven't found a desktop manager for linux that really screamed "COOL".

Because enlightenment uses Evas, which uses hardware acceleration when available, and gracefully scales down when it's not.

Judging from the comments people have made on this story, it works well on fast systems with hw accel, as well as on slow systems without it.

In other words: this has been thought about, and it's done right.

http://enlightenment.org/Enlightenment/Screenshots /files/_files/e17_video.avi

terminal...you mean like eterm?

it's there...
http://enlightenment.org/Enlightenment/Screenshots /DR17_User_Screenshots/_previews/vandango_e17_scre en.png.html

I have heard marvels of Embryo Enlightenment version of SMALL

I know this is a bit offtopic, but why isn't their more buzz around http://www.enlightenment.org/? It seems that alot of the stuff KDE has been trying to do as of late using hacks has been the focus of Enlightenment. Anyone?

Use enlightenment. No bloat (fast) and you don't need all those slow extensions for dropshadows and (fake) transparency. And it's beautiful.

I think its great that X is getting a universal architecture for this sort of stuff, but I'll be disapointed if Rastermann and others dont have some sort of input in this, mainly because DR17 is showing me how *fast* this sort of thing can be (faster than KDE in the case of DR17 and a 2 second boot-time on my AMD 2600+).

As for applications made using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries.... wow...! Entice is absolutely amazing, totally dynamic and animated, as well as mainly transparent, perfect for an image viewer.

The point is that you don't realise how USEFUL these sort of features are. Why shouldn't menus in an image viewer fade in and out and be semi-transparent? When you use it, it makes perfect sense.

I know there will be people who consider this sort of tech a waste of resources, and it can certainly be abused. However, if it's done properly this type of environment can add a LOT to your user experience.

I suggest you try DR17 to see exactly how impressive this sort of tech can be!

I'd rather see (and yes, I've considered doing it partly myself) a custom build of Firefox for E17 and its related technologies.

Imlib2 can do some nice stuff, its small and fast and already uses GL acceleration when possible.

I'd rather see (and yes, I've considered doing it partly myself) a custom build of Firefox for E17 and its related technologies.

Imlib2 can do some nice stuff, its small and fast and already uses GL acceleration when possible.

Sure most have one or two innovative features, but what applications in the OS world are really innovative, especially from an end user perspective?

Certainly not desktop environments, servers, remote shells, anonymizing (or swarming) networks, or compilers.

Because all of those things are just replacements for commercial applications, and did nothing new.

I think MythTV badly needs an Edje UI. That would be a match made in heaven.

(For those unfamiliar with Edje, it is the UI library used in E17 and EFL-based applications like Entrance.)

user interface IS enlightenment: http://www.enlightenment.org/

Do you understand that games aren't operating systems?

I'm comparing two operating systems and their primary platforms - Darwin on PPC and Linux on x86. I'm saying Linux has all of the features, but no eye candy, so when Enlightenment, or another window manager that's stable with good eye candy arrives, OS X 10.4 will not be so appealing.

Not so appealing, of course, if you can't imagine looking more than ten minutes into the future.

I'd feel cheated if I were a shareholder in Microsoft. Look at what a small group of volunteers has done with Enlightenment in basically the same time frame.. Okay, it's not a perfectly fair comparison, Microsoft has to deal with hardware/driver/etc issues and a crazy amount of users and platforms. But for the amount of resources they have on hand to build a new operating system, they could have come up with something better than this. I'll be waiting for Enlightenment DR17 in the meantime.

"Enlightenment looks like its usual "prrreeeeetttyyy" self"

You've completely overlooked the major accomplishments the Enlightenment Project has made. Yeah, it's gorgeous (is that a bad thing?), but the achievment is the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries that make it all possible.

The design that went into the libraries makes it easy to design an app that's functional, visually pleasing, and well integrated with the rest of the desktop and applications.

You've really got to visit enlightenment.org to understand how well designed the system is.

Yeah, they've created a pretty interface, but they've got the technology to back it up.

Why wait two years? You can punish yourself right now with enlightenment.

I love to see the error checking in that C code. I won't be trusting Enlightenment to do anything more than crash.

There are way more UI's than XP/KDE/Gnome. What about the MacOSX UI? Or Enlightenment? or XFCE, the list goes on...

That's all we need. How 'bout un-fucking the current UI usability problems with the Linux desktop before adding more superfluous shit on top of an already ridiculously complex system. At least they could use something that already exists.

>- the software support isn't there. No CATIA, no
>ProE, no etc. Can't be an engineer using Linux
>alone.

They sound like rather obscure/unusual applications. What is their function?

>it is still fucking slow. Hate to break it to
>you, but as a long time xfce4 user, XP is still
>faster.

Get a 2.6 series kernel, and compile it with the pre-emptible feature turned on, and SMTP support turned off if you've only got one processor. Make sure you also have a swap partition. In terms of distributions, this one might interest you.

In terms of window managers, if speed is important to you, don't use KDE. Compile a stripped down version of Enlightenment and use fbpanel in conjunction with it. I will be very surprised after you've done that if your RAM usage (before any other applications) is above 50 Mb. What hardware are you using?

>But it's slower for getting things done because
>double-clicking an icon is easier than typing
>/usr/share/baoeu/otehu/ -x -die. Pressing a
>flurry of keys might feel faster, but it isn't
>actually faster.

I strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with the contents of this document, and also this one, if you have not already done so. You can download a version of make compatible with that tutorial from here.
You may also be interested in downloading this program and learning about its use.

If after having a look at some of these tools and taking some time to learn/evaluate them, you still desire to remain GUI based, that's fine. Some people genuinely *are* more visually oriented, neurologically. But in order merely to set the record straight that use of the command line can indeed be remarkably powerful for those who are oriented towards it, I would invite you to as I said at least evaluate the above documents and tools. The command line takes some time and mental effort to become confident with, but once you are familiar with it, the levels of flexibility and automation it can offer you truly are unavailable anywhere else.

Actually... E17 is more than a window manager... it is suppose to be a desktop shell, which is different than just a window manager... it does more.

Faq entry about desktop shell

It will however, as far as I know (which is relatively little) work with KDE/Gnome.

For those looking for a little more Meat check out the DOCS over at Enlightenment.org
I have installed the libraries and have been screwing around with it in my spare time for about two weeks. The docs are a little outdated but give you enough info, so that you can figure it out just by looking at the header files.

For those looking for a little more Meat check out the DOCS over at Enlightenment.org
I have installed the libraries and have been screwing around with it in my spare time for about two weeks. The docs are a little outdated but give you enough info, so that you can figure it out just by looking at the header files.

From reading the article, it really just sounds like they are talking about ideas that Raster and co. have been long advocating (and developing) in Enlightenment DR17.

Really? Enlightenment double-buffers the whole desktop, so resizing windows keeps the borders and contents in sync? Enlightenment has a hardware-accelerated PDF viewer?

I guess they *kind* of have a toolkit that takes advantage of the features in the drawing layer, but it doesn't appear to have any HLL bindings, or Unicode support, or accessibility features, or anything else that I expect from a modern toolkit.

Enlightenment E17 IS the next generation X desktop! It has the fastest gfx libraries on this planet and it's veeery smooth! It's already released as developer version (DR17), but should be released for masses soon.

Since taking advantage of these new toys would require a new theme system, Havoc and I have been talking about how a very different theme / widget rendering system might work with this that allows for custom design of any window, widget, or anything in between. One of the things us designers have been experimenting with behind closed doors is what you can do with a window's design when its not drawn out of a bunch of stock widgets but you have a freer hand.

Those of us who like out UIs fast, featureful, and pant wettingy gorgeous, already have what we want

Sadly enlightenment doesn't run on OSX.

http://www.enlightenment.org/

Evas lib (part of Enlightenment) has both OpenGL and software benching

OpenGL:
FRAME COUNT: 69952 frames
TIME: 20.000 seconds
AVERAGE FPS: 3497.584 fps
EVAS BENCH: 58.293

Software:
FRAME COUNT: 4899 frames
TIME: 20.003 seconds
AVERAGE FPS: 244.911 fps
EVAS BENCH: 4.082

SPECviewperf is a very comprehensive OpenGL benchmark. Your own applications should be your personal benchmark though, if you only run Doom3 or UT2K4 then these other benchmarks don't really matter.

I actually doubt that any desktop effort based on an existing toolkit (Qt, Gtk+, etc.) will lead to significantly improved usability or functionality: those toolkits already encode a lot of assumptions and restrictions that any desktop effort based on them will be constrained by.

Projects like enlightenment are striving to innovate by creating new libraries and shunning the current crop of toolkits that assume too much and constrain design to a rather limited set of possibilities.

My favorite of this ilk is eRSS from the enlightenment project.

I agree. I prefer to use Enlightenment (btw, DR17 is now in CVS!), and one problem I've run into is that if I try to fire up Nautilus, it stomps all over the E desktop and pulls up the Gnome desktop instead... well, actually it's a kind of weird fusion, with the Gnome background and icons but E stuff there as well.

I do like E's eye candy, but am sympathetic to the parent poster's argument for a leaner, cleaner desktop/WM. Many of E's themes are over-the-top, but at least it's flexible and fast enough to support a lean environment. E runs at least twice as fast on my machine as either Gnome or KDE.

I agree. I prefer to use Enlightenment (btw, DR17 is now in CVS!), and one problem I've run into is that if I try to fire up Nautilus, it stomps all over the E desktop and pulls up the Gnome desktop instead... well, actually it's a kind of weird fusion, with the Gnome background and icons but E stuff there as well.

I do like E's eye candy, but am sympathetic to the parent poster's argument for a leaner, cleaner desktop/WM. Many of E's themes are over-the-top, but at least it's flexible and fast enough to support a lean environment. E runs at least twice as fast on my machine as either Gnome or KDE.

Sun Nov 28 - benr - DR17 now in CVS!!!

Enlightenment DR17 has been added into the primary CVS tree. No, hell hasn't frozen over and last we looked pigs weren't flying although this might signal Duke Nukem Forever sometime before Christmas. Feel free to grab it and muttle around. It's limited in its support for ICCCM, no NETWM support and it has no iconification, virtual desktops, shading, keybindings or button bindings, but it does work. Patches are welcome, contributions are welcome, but bug reports should be ignored... this is CVS code afterall.

If you haven't followed Enlightenment in a while, you'll need to catch up on the EFL first. The EFL is the foundation (get it?) of the DR17 window manager. Information on CVS and the build order can be found here.

Learn more about Enlightenment DR17 on its project page.

Sun Nov 28 - benr - DR17 now in CVS!!!

Enlightenment DR17 has been added into the primary CVS tree. No, hell hasn't frozen over and last we looked pigs weren't flying although this might signal Duke Nukem Forever sometime before Christmas. Feel free to grab it and muttle around. It's limited in its support for ICCCM, no NETWM support and it has no iconification, virtual desktops, shading, keybindings or button bindings, but it does work. Patches are welcome, contributions are welcome, but bug reports should be ignored... this is CVS code afterall.

If you haven't followed Enlightenment in a while, you'll need to catch up on the EFL first. The EFL is the foundation (get it?) of the DR17 window manager. Information on CVS and the build order can be found here.

Learn more about Enlightenment DR17 on its project page.

The new default winter theme for e16 is about as plain and simple as you can get without removing theming all together.

it was enough to make me give enlightenment another go, and i've been finding it to be excellent.

screenshot

Really awesome. Perhaps this could be added to Firefox, especially for browsing local folders. If it's targetting IE as competition, perhaps it should also include such capabilities. It pioneered tabs as a way to revolutionize browsing, and it would be useful (to me at least) if it included this functionality.

If not, Nautilus and Konqueror could also benefit from this ability. It would help cut down on time. Drag a file onto a tab, you can paste/move/extract to that folder. Click back on a tab, move a directory higher up into the tree, maybe you're organizing your MP3 collection and you need to recategorize a few songs or whatever.

the fm